Brandyn Garcia began the season in the Seattle Mariners system at the AA level where he dominated striking out 33 batters in 25 innings before earning a promotion to Tacoma the Mariners AAA affiliate. He continued to be effective there as well before earning a big league promotion on 7/21. Garcia quickly opened eyes at the big league level due to his combination of being left-handed and big time stuff. It was shortly after that the Dbacks asked for Garcia and Ashton Izzi as the return for half a season of Josh Naylor. The rest of the season for Garcia would be split between the big league bullpen in Arizona and Reno. In his final callup on 8/31 Garcia would begin a pretty solid stretch at the big league level where he finished the season pitching 11innings of a 4.09 ERA (1.86 FIP) while striking out 13 batters. All and all his season long major league ERA of 5.65 wont jump off of the page at you, however his FIP and xFIP were both pretty respectable at 3.07 and 4.03 respectively.
Brandyn Garcia is one of the most intriguing young arms in the Dbacks bullpen going into 2026. Fangraphs actually really likes Garcia going forward projecting him for a 3.97 ERA in 2026. With Garcia it’s a high octane heater at 97-100 from a low 15 degree arm angle that generates a ton of arm side run. He pairs that pitch with a sweeper that darts the opposite way away from a left handed hitter and a hard 90 mph slider. It is power stuff for sure from the young lefty. Stuff+ loves Garcia with all of his offerings grading out as above average. He also has an intriguing pitch movement chart as well with everything being so lateral left and right.
I guess what im trying to get across is that this guy has the stuff to be a late inning high leverage arm at the big league level for a long time. The key for Garcia however is going to be if he is going to be able to throw enough strikes as his walk rate was well above average at the minor league and major league level.
The other curious thing about Garcia is that despite being 6’4”, he gets some of the least amount of extension in baseball at just 5.5 feet. This likely contributes to his fastball actually playing down despite his big time velocity and movement.
There is also a world out there where maybe the Dbacks convert Garcia back to a starter. Garcia started games as recently as 2024 where he was pretty dominant in high A before making the jump to reliever in 2025. I highly doubt the Dbacks would go down this road, but I just wanted to note that it wasn’t all that long ago that he was a successful starter.
The timing of this review is also interesting in that the Mariners just grabbed headlines yesterday trading one of their top prospects Harry Ford for another pitcher that resembles Garcia highly in Jose Ferrer. Another lefty who sits 97-98 with tons of sink who is the same age 25. The biggest difference between the 2 however is Ferrer walks batters at about a third the rate of Garcia. However, you can see how much value a pitcher like that has. Young lefties with stuff like Garcia don’t come along very often.
Id love to see Garcia get a serious run in the Arizona bullpen in 2026 where he improves his control and limits walks and reaches his high leverage backend reliever ceiling. This is exactly the type of talent the Dbacks have lacked in recent years, and they need to be able to take the next step and actually develop him so that he can reach his full potential, something this Dbacks team has not been able to do in recent years.